Tuesday, October 29, 2013

I am entering this Totally Boy Crazy quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival in the baby quilt catagory. If you are new to my blog, welcome! I love so many things about this quilt - the scrappy-ness of it, the yellow submarine, and of course the fabric! This is an original pattern I created for Riley Blake Designs using their "Boy Crazy" line of fabric. The pattern can be found here. It measures 41" x 48".

This quilt has piecing and appliqué. I machine quilted the quilt on my Bernina.

Hi, I am Ella! My mom is Jedi Craft Girl. Today I am writing a blog post about my fish quilt. I am entering it in the Blogger's Quilt Festival in the "Throw Quilt" Category. Thanks for stopping by to look at my quilt.

I am 14 years old and I have been sewing since I was 8 years old. I love fish!! I just got back from Hawaii where I got to spend 2 weeks in the ocean. I found this quilt pattern at the Long Beach Quilt Festival. The pattern is called Huki Lau by Beyond the Reef. I got to meet the designer, Natalie Barnes. I loved this pattern because it uses tropical prints and batiks and the appliqué fish are actually outlines of real tropical fish! The quilt measures 54" x 70".

I made patterns out of paper and hand cut each fish.

I used Spray n Bond to attach each fish to the background fabric. Then I sewed around each fish.

I had my quilt professionally quilted. I love how each fish is outlined by squiggles - it looks like real water! This is my favorite quilt and I sleep with it every night.

Monday, October 28, 2013

I just finished helping with my church's annual Halloween Party. It is such a big undertaking - but so much fun!!!! The theme was "Frightfully Fancy". Here are the invitations - I printed them on burlap colored paper:

This is the finished cultural hall - it turned out amazing especially considering we didn't really have a decorations budget!!

This is a little vignette by the front entrenace

Groups of paper bats guiding people down the hall - spooky!!

A spooky collection of old art and vintage frames.

(A little before picture of putting up all the lights)

My friends and I emptied our houses and pulled all our decor accents together. It was a little shocking to see all we had - this is just a sampling!

One morning my friend and I were at an estate sale and the estate's owner had an intense doll-making hobby. They were selling all her doll-head molds. They wanted $10 a mold, then they said $8, then said $5 if we bought a bunch of them. When we went to leave I offered $3 a head and they took it! I am now the proud owner of 10 spooky doll-head molds. They were absolutely perfect accents to the centerpieces on the tables!

Each table was decorated differently - vases, candle sticks, crows, birdcages, owls, clocks, vintage pictures, black pumpkins, etc. Then we put a spider web treatment on it all and it looked amazing! Everyone kept asking where we got all the decorations! It was a little embarrassing admitting that we owned it all!! You should see my garage!!

During dinner we had all the piano students play halloween piano pieces for the background music.

This is the long serving table where we served the food.

And the food was AMAZING!!! This guy spent the entire day smoking ribs in a smoker he built just for the party. He also made his famous BBQ chicken.

Best ribs EVER!!!!

We had a photo booth where families could get their pictures taken. We also had 6 different carnival-type games, a cake walk, and trunk-or-treat!

Then we had a spook alley - and not just any spook alley. Our Young Men age 12-18 arrived at the church at 8am with lumber and tools and began constructing walls for the spook alley. They stayed and worked the entire day - best spook alley ever!

They framed walls then attached black plastic. There was an outer maze for older kids and an inside maze that was less scary for the younger kids.

I think the boys had a little too much fun! It was too hard to photograph when it was finished because it was pretty dark!

It was ALOT of work but so worth it. Everyone had such a great time!!!